Distribution of Budget from the Program Position to the Measures
Use
The IM component provides a number of ways of controlling the relationship of individual measures to the investment program as regards budgeting. The main purpose is to control how closely the budget at measure level is tied to the assignable budget at the investment program level.
Features
You can monitor the approved budget of an investment measure using an active availability control. This availability control prevents the budget from being exceeded at the moment of posting. When you enter certain transactions, the system checks if there is sufficient budget left. This budget could be the available project budget or order budget, or the available and released budget (release). When making the availability control, the system uses tolerance limits you entered in Customizing. If you want to use the active availability control at the investment measure level, you have to specify it in the budget profiles of the orders or WBS elements.
The system does not have an active availability control in this form for the budget of an investment program position, since the budget is normally not as binding at this level. However, there is another system function that approximates the availability control. You can set the Budget dist. overall indicator in the master data of the investment program position. Then the investment measures assigned to this program position can receive their budget only through a direct distribution of the program position budget to the investment measures (top-down budgeting). It is then no longer possible to budget the measures independently. This procedure ensures that the total of the measure budgets cannot exceed the overall budget of the program position to which they are assigned. Basically, this corresponds to an availability control at the investment program level for the measures assigned to it.
You can also set the Budget dist. overall indicator in Customizing for Investment Management at the level of the program type. The result is that the Budget dist. overall indicator will be proposed as a default value in all program positions belonging to this program type that are created subsequently. However, you can still change this indicator in the program position.
When you use budget categories (refer to
You can carry out an active availability control for funds allotted for orders as compared to the budget of an investment program position. However, you have to use a WBS element as an intermediate object. The WBS element has a 1:1 relationship to the investment program position. The WBS element carries out the budget monitoring function.
The assignment of the order to the investment program position is then indirect, by means of the WBS element. As a result of the assignment of the orders to the WBS element, it is no longer possible to budget the orders independently. When the availability control is active on the WBS element, the system checks all assigned values from the orders against the budget of the WBS element.
Overall Values and Annual Values
Using the Budget dist. ann. vals. (budget distribution of annual values) indicator in the program type, you can specify if budget distribution from the investment program position applies only to the overall values of the investment measures, or also to the annual values of the investment measures. In combination with the Budget dist. overall indicator, this indicator can have the following effects:
You can set a default value in the program type for both the Budget. dist. overall and Budget dist. ann. vals. indicators.
Separate Budgeting of the Individual Measures
If you do not set the Budget dist. overall indicator, you can budget investment measures separately. This method can be useful when you want a periodic check of the total of the investment measure budgets against the budgets of the program positions using reports, but it is not possible or desired to specify the exact measures on which the costs will come due from this approved budget. When you use budget categories, this is the only method you can use (refer to
Budget Categories).
When you use separate budgeting of investment measures, an update of distributed values at program level is not possible.